Empire star Jussie Smollett was reportedly brutally attacked by two men who beat him up, put his head in a noose and screamed, “This is MAGA country.” (MAGA stands for Make America Great Again, Donald Trump’s campaign slogan.)

According to TMZ, Smollett arrived in Chicago from New York late Monday, and at around 2 AM, he was hungry and went out to a Subway. When he walked out, someone yelled, “Aren’t you that faggot Empire nigger?”

The two men – both white and wearing ski masks – proceeded to viciously attack the actor, who fought back. They beat him up badly, fracturing a rib. They put a rope around his neck, poured bleach on him and as they left, they yelled, “This is MAGA country.”

Jussie was taken to Northwestern Memorial where he was treated. He was discharged later Tuesday morning.

That Grape Juice reported that he’d first gotten the letter below. The letter, with cut-out letters spelling: You will die black fag, was posted to him about a week ago. The envelope the letter arrived in appears to say MAGA in the upper left corner.

The Chicago PD is reportedly investigating the incident as a battery, with the police saying they are treating it as a possible hate crime.

The response to the Smollett’s attack has been a mix of shock, sadness, heartbreak, and outrage.

There are legit people out here saying that Jussie Smollett is lying, that the attack may be a hookup gone wrong or a gambling debt issue, that he doesn’t like Trump. Yada, yada.
All I can say is…I hope someone wI’ll believe y’all if you are attacked by dumb assholes.

You should see the stupid comments on instablog, lindaikeji and Bellanaija.
Even the American Gospel artists who put up his picture and sent him their law and prayers were “attacked”.

The level of religious bigotry is mind blowing.
You can kill, fornicate, steal etc, but the greatest sin is being “a gay” or standing up for “a gay”.
Christians, muslims need to do better.

This actually got me thinking, some day, there wouldn’t be a need to hide, this discriminatory law would be repealed.
We would still live in fear tho, something like this could happen and the police would turn a blind eye, Nigerians would ignore it and run under the umbrella of “someone has to teach them a lesson because they are what is wrong with the world”.

This doesn’t capture the way I feel at all.
We are “responsible” for what happens to us, this is something that should push us to work hard, attain positions where we can effect some serious level of change and influence policies and reorientate people.
The truth is no one would do that for us, we can only trust us to protect us.

If Bobrisky is attacked tomorrow, I’m sure celebrities wouldn’t rally around him, the blogs would talk about it, but majority of Nigerians would support the attack, saying someone has to teach him a lesson, he is unconventional blah blah blah.

Again, we can’t afford to be on the sidelines, we need to be involved in this fight, cos we are fighting for our lives.

Nigeria is a shameless country filled with vile and hypocritical people! They use the Bible as a whip to torment gay people, while they don’t live by rules of the Bible. I just wish gay people were united and cooperated enough to fight all these losers tormenting us. Very messed up world!